Antivirus software could make your company more vulnerable

Imagine getting a call from your company's IT department telling you your workstation has been compromised and you should stop what you're doing immediately. You're stumped: You went through the company's security training and you're sure you didn't open any suspicious email attachments or click on any bad links; you know that your company has a solid patching policy and the software on your computer is up to date; you're also not the type of employee who visits non-work-related websites while on the job. So, how did this happen?

A few days later, an unexpected answer comes down from the security firm that your company hired to investigate the incident: Hackers got in by exploiting a flaw in the corporate antivirus program installed on your computer, the same program that's supposed to protect it from attacks. And all it took was for attackers to send you an email message that you didn't even open.